‘London’ Is a Little Bit Underdeveloped

The San Diego Gilbert & Sullivan Company production of “The Mikado” may have closed less than two weeks ago, but the play’s “Three Little Maids From School” are still singing at the Casa del Prado Theatre in Balboa Park.

Except that now, instead of being portrayed by tittering females with names such as Yum-Yum, Pitti-Sing and Peep-Bo, the parts are being sung by actors playing the parts of Noel Coward, Alfred Lunt and Alexander Woolcott in “London Is a Little Bit of All Right!”

“Three Little Maids” is one of more than 30 songs of the Gilbert and Sullivan era, compiled in revue format by J. Sherwood Montgomery, by about a dozen composers on both sides of the Atlantic. The production runs through Sunday.

Montgomery, who also directed, designed the set and is featured in the five-person ensemble, tosses intriguing snippets of trivia into the mix. For example, the fact that Woolcott, Lunt and Coward actually did sing “Three Little Maids” in a command performance for the king of England.

But, although it is amusing to see Montgomery (as Woolcott), Leon Natker (as Coward) and Jeffrey Rockwell (as Lunt) fluttering their fans as they sing, the effect is about as amusing as can be expected of an inside joke about a handful of people who are no longer household names.

Ostensibly, the framework of “London” is a theater tour by the flamboyant critic Woolcott, lasting from 1919 to 1939 and taking place on both sides of the Atlantic. But little witty cocktail exchanges and snippets from famous reviews do not really tell us who these people were.

We never get more than a fleeting sense of what London and New York were like back then between the two World Wars or what it meant to be members of the “Algonquin Group” and the “Savoy Hotel Grille Group.”

It does open a window of understanding slightly just to hear more than 30 songs from the period, both from the still-famous--Coward, Irving Berlin, Gilbert & Sullivan, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and George and Ira Gershwin--and from lesser-known figures such as Douglas Furber and Philip Braham, Andy Razaf, Dion Titheridge and Ivor Novello, and Arthur Le Clerq.

But it makes one long for a better tour guide to explain who listened to whom and who was affected by whom, and how these songs fared against the desperately gay background of a barely recovered world that was about to fall apart again.

The problems with the show are partly a case of revues working better in settings more intimate than the broad Casa del Prado stage, or as tributes to a single composer or performer. If you’re going to span the music of a period, it helps to have a better sense of the period that produced the work.

The material is aided by a spirited and skillful cast, from the graceful Patti Goodwin, who injects great fun into the part of the glitteringly funny Gertrude Lawrence, to Montgomery, at his best with wry gems such as Coward’s “Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs. Worthington” and John Wharton’s “The Tale of the Oyster” (who dreams of being eaten at a sophisticated cocktail party).

Rockwell brings style and assurance to his more romantic numbers, “Gershwin’s “A Foggy Day” and Coward’s “Sail Away” and “If Love Were All.”

Natker, who plays a dapper Coward, gets to go all out in Cole Porter’s “In the Still of the Night,” which is, unfortunately, arranged a bit too briskly for such a romantic melody by Hollace Koman (who shares the piano duties on stage with Rockwell).

But the real weak link is Dee Ann Johnston, whose performance Sunday would have been vastly improved by an understudy, or perhaps a dose of cold medicine.

All the efforts add up to a show that is pleasant, even delightful in parts, but decidedly uneven and lacking in anything akin to historical, sociological or dramatic momentum. This show is a reworking of the “London Is a Little Bit of All Right!” that the San Diego Gilbert & Sullivan Company debuted last year.

Maybe next year, if the company goes for further revisions, it will be more than a little bit of all right. Right now, it is decidedly less.

“LONDON IS A LITTLE BIT OF ALL RIGHT!”

Written and compiled by J. Sherwood Montgomery. Direction and set design by J. Sherwood Montgomery. Musical director is Hollace Koman. Lighting by Ron Vodicka. With Patti Goodwin, J. Sherwood Montgomery, Dee Ann Johnston, Leon Natker, Hollace Koman and Jeffrey Rockwell. At 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, with a Sunday matinee at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $10-16. At the Casa del Prado Theatre, Balboa Park. (619) 231-5714.